If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Jupitermedia Legal Notice -- NO PERMISSION TO USE CODE SAMPLES?!

Hello:

I am an attorney and a self-taught vb.net coder. In my life as an attorney, I always counsel my software development clients to check the licensing terms for all code they use in their projects, even sample code.

I've found some great sample code here on the DevX site that I would love to use in the project I am working on -- which if all goes well, will be a commercially released software package geared towards the legal market.

But I can't do that because -- and I wonder how many of your registered forum members know this -- IT WOULD AMOUNT TO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT AND BREACH OF CONTRACT.

Clicking on the "Legal Notices" link at the bottom of each webpage on this site brings up the "Jupitermedia Corporation Web Site User Agreement," which I discovered -- to my astonishment -- contains the following language in all capitals (with my emphasis underlined):

YOU MAY NOT MODIFY, COPY, REPRODUCE, REPUBLISH, UPLOAD, POST, TRANSMIT, OR DISTRIBUTE, IN ANY MANNER, THE MATERIAL ON THE SITE, INCLUDING TEXT, GRAPHICS, CODE AND/OR SOFTWARE.

This clause renders all of the excellent sample code posted on the DevX site completely useless to me (and frankly any other developer who wants to use it legally).

As such, I strongly urge Jupitermedia to redraft the posted User Agreement to not only allow users to copy, reproduce, distribute (etc.) sample code downloaded from the site (there are numerous "Download the Code" links for-cryin'-out-loud ), but to include language that specifically grants users a perpetual, royalty free license to use sample code in whatever way they wish (isn't that one of the reasons developers pay to join the site ). Further, for any site users who unwittingly have already used DevX sample code in their projects in violation of the current User Agreement, Jupitermedia should also include language making the above changes retroactive.

I'm posting this thread not only to maybe get Jupitermedia to change the current User Agreement to allow me to safely use DevX sample code, but also to raise awareness of this issue for all other DevX users -- and how dangerous it is from a legal perspecitve to use sample code downloaded from the DevX site.

I will post a little more tomorrow. For now suffice it to say that the expectation is that code found in articles and posted publicly on the forum are freely available for others to use in personal or commercial applications unless otherwise noted in that specific code, post, or article. On some of our other sites, we have licensing/user agreements that slightly modify the Jupitermedia agreeement to allow for this. I will verify that we have the proper adjustments on this site as well.

In the mean time, if this is a critical issue for someone, they can contact me for a specific permission if needed.

Thank you for your quick reply -- and I'm glad to hear that the site's policy appears to be in line with developers' expectations. Now we just need to make sure that the User Agreement/License docs are in line with that policy.

I did notice that the language in the User Agreement allows for individual Jupitermedia web sites to post their own license terms. However, I wasn't able to find any customized language for DevX by clicking on any of the other links at the bottom of the DevX pages, but I might have missed it.

I've looked deeper into this. It is going to take me a couple of days to get more specific wording added to this site. My previous email indicates the intent of this site and forum. Now, I simply need to get something offiical written and posted.